Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) on Netflix
Varla, Rosie and Billie are go-go dancers who race sports cars across the California desert. They take Linda hostage and learn of an old rancher's hidden fortune.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.6/1017,566 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
Varla, Rosie and Billie work as go-go dancers and live for speed, racing their sports cars over the California desert and playing chicken on the salt flats. They cross paths with Tommy and Linda, a young couple out to run a time trial, and a fight leaves Linda in their hands, drugged and held captive. In a small desert town the women stop for gas and notice an old man in a wheelchair and his muscular son. The attendant says the man was disabled in a railway accident, became strange afterward, and took a large settlement that he keeps hidden around his rundown ranch house. Varla proposes robbing him, and the three dancers drive out to the ranch with their prisoner.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Lori Williams won the role of Billie in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! only after director Russ Meyer doubted she had a big enough bust; she padded her bra with pushups and Meyer approved during rehearsals. She played the part, she said, like a cartoon, bigger than life.
- Tura Satana, who played Varla, staged the film's fight scenes herself because nobody else knew how; she had to physically pick up each of her male co-stars and one frightened actor was laid on the floor. Much of the action had to be shot in reverse.
- Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was made for a budget of about $45,000, and Russ Meyer shot it in black and white to save money.
- Susan Bernard, who was sixteen, was genuinely scared of co-star Tura Satana, and the friction on set was blamed largely on the presence of Bernard's mother, required because of her age; some thought her fear fed her performance as a kidnapping victim.
- Russ Meyer, who began making films in the US Army's 166th Signal Photographic Company during World War II, ran strictly regimented shoots with a small crew of former Army buddies; actor Charles Napier compared working for him to landing in Normandy.
- An original title track called Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! was written by Big Brother and the Holding Company but was ultimately "banned", according to the band's Peter Albin.
- Music video director Keir McFarlane said a scene in Janet Jackson's "You Want This" was a direct homage, showing the Porsche-driving singer and her companions driving circles around two men in the desert, and the Spice Girls' "Say You'll Be There" video was also inspired by the film.
